Wii Games Three of Decade's Top Five Bestsellers

Getting in shape may be on the verge of becoming more attractive in the US than running over prostitutes with 4 doors, low riders, vans, and sports cars, quips IGN. Okay, so the popular mainstream games site isn't doing our hobby any favors by boiling Grand Theft Auto down to its detractors' favorite boogeymen (or boogey-trollops...or "disinformation," when you realize the latter has nothing to do with the actual game). In any event, NPD North American sales data passed along by the site suggests that Nintendo's Wii Fit exercise game is about to unseat Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as the number two bestselling video game in a decade.

What's number one? That'd be Wii Play, another Nintendo barn-stormer with sales of over 11.1 million units through August of this year, leaping past GTA: San Andreas by nearly 3 million units.

Who's sitting on piles of money: The company charging $90 for a game sold with a Balance Board (the exercise interface itself) and sales of 7.9 million units, or $711 million, that's who. Compare Wii Play's revenue with cumulative US "all time" box office grosses for movies like Titanic ($601m), The Dark Knight ($533m) and Star Wars ($460m). Not too shabby.

And number three spot-holder Wii Fit (7.9 million units) has its eyes on second place's GTA: San Andreas (8.25 million units). The exercise game should bypass Rockstar's sandbox crime-spree game in a matter of months. Right behind Wii Fit is GTA: Vice City, with 6.9 million units, and nipping at Vice City's heels? Mario Kart Wii, with 6.7 million units.

Three of the top five bestselling games since 2000 are Wii titles, then.